Waking up in a new world: Part IV

Editor's note: Don't be one of those people who reads the last page of a book first:
Part I then Part II then Part III then this one, in that order, thank you very much.
Once again, I must apologize for the lack of links and the unedited post. I'm on vacation, dammit!

Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Kind of strange term if you think about it. As compared to what, weapons of minimum destruction? I don't remember exactly when it entered the popular lexicon, but it basically covers weapons that can kill vast numbers of people, with a minimal amount of effort or cost. Probably the first WMD's were the atom bombs dropped by the US on Japan. I still have debates about whether or not that was a necessary evil, or war crime. I'm of the persuasion that it saved the lives of some 3,000,000 American soldiers. Judging by Japan's history of refusing to surrender, and refusal to surrender in battles leading up to the bombings, I see no indication they would not fight to the death for their homeland.

Since that time, weapons that have been called WMDs tend to be of the flavor of nuclear, chemical or biological warheads, easily dispersed with the push of a button. Nukes blow up, big time, and cause the rubble to be radioactive. Chemical weapons usually kill you by searing any number of different parts of the human body, lungs, central nervous system, burn the skin off your body, etc. Biological weapons are usually diseases, viruses, or another type of agent found in nature that can be easily controlled by the attacker but not those on the receiving end. For example, one side has a vaccination for a disease the other side lacks.

Saddam had these weapons. I know it for a fact. I have seen the pictures on the news of the Iranian veterans with their broken and burned bodies. I've seen footage of the dead Kurds and Shiites from the 1991 uprising. They existed, guaranteed 100% true. I watched Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, reporting from a WMD warehouse in Iraq, interviewing Scott Ridder, then head of the UN inspection team. He was explaining to Rather why it was taking so long to dispose of all those weapons. Its because there were so many of them. The warehouse was huge, packed to the rafters. The weapons were found, stored, cataloged, and the destruction process was taking place. See, with WMDs, you can't just throw them into the garbage, or burry them in a land fill. They need to be handled very carefully, and the process was taking place.

But it wasn't over. As the memory of the first Gulf War faded from American pop culture, so did news on the progress of the destruction. Scott Ridder was constantly arguing to the American press that President Clinton was not giving the inspectors the backing they needed to complete the mission. The fewer people paid attention, the bolder Saddam got. Finally, the team had had enough and they pulled out, leaving behind some 20,000+ tons of the stuff that had not yet been destroyed. That's not even counting any that hadn't been found yet, or any news ones that might have been produced in clandestine operations.

By the time the UN pulled inspectors out of Iraq for good on December 16, 1998 the inspectors had discovered and destroyed some 38,000 chemical weapons, 480,000 liters of live chemical weapons, 48 missiles and 817 of 819 Russian supplied long range missiles. Also tons and tons of gear used in making, weponizing and launching them. The secret chemical weapon plant at al-Hakim had produced 500,000 liters of biological agents alone, which means there was at a minimum 20,000 liters floating around Iraq.

(gift to editor: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200401/pollack )

In the run up to the second Gulf War, Scott Ridder campaigned relentlessly to halt the invasion. Being one of the UN inspectors, he knew what was found and still floating around. He knew the capabilities of Iraq. He knew the efforts to which Iraq went to keep their WMD operation active. He knew there were weapons, because he saw them.

There is no doubt that no conclusive WMD evidence has been found since the fall of Saddam. Now one person might be able to deduce that there were no WMDs. From there its only a small stretch to say there never were. But its a lie, Saddam had them, Saddam used them, the UN had found many of them. The weapons existed. The question to me, is not did they exist, but where are they now?

Let's play a little game I like to use as a debating tool. Its called "what is more likely", shall we? When the US began occupying Iraq, the push was on to find the weapons and neutralize them as soon as possible. Our ever lovable CBS Evening News was back on the scene. They were interviewing one of the top scientists from Saddam's WMD program. The Dr., a woman, stated all those weapons left over by the UN had been destroyed years ago. Perish the thought, they were destroyed so long ago, she couldn't even remember when.

What makes more sense:
A) Saddam, out of the goodness of his own heart, and his compassion for humanity, destroyed all those evil weapons, but didn't want to bother the UN, so he kept the destruction quiet, and continued to suffer under the crippling restrictions of UN sanctions.

or:
B) Saddam kept his weapons, moved them underground, continued to make them as best he could under UN sanctions. When it became obvious that the US was preparing for war a second time (it took about 14 months just to get the US Army in position for the invasion), he either hid them in Iraq, sent them to allies abroad, or both.

Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Howard Dean tend to agree with option A. My money is on option B.

Now about Islamic Fundamentalism.